Music For Holy Week

Hear My Prayer–Felix Mendelssohn
When I read the gospel accounts of Christ’s last week in Jerusalem, I’m often struck more than anything by the intense loneliness that seems to be part of the torments he endured. Despite being surrounded by people who claimed, and even tried to love him, he was utterly alone. I once scandalized a congregation by making this poem part of an Easter program:

no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met Christ

jesus) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed (as

close I’m to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness

(e e cummings (of course))

This piece by Mendelssohn captures that sense of loneliness for me, with the soprano alone above the (largely superfluous) chorus, like the disciples trying to tag along, but not really ever getting it. Like much of the music I like, this is too treacly for your average music student to be enthusiastic about, but I think it’s beautiful and love it anyway. The text evokes, without quoting, many Psalms, but especially 39, and, I think, the plaintive lament of the Savior’s early ministry: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”

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Comments

I love this piece – thanks for prompting me to listen to it this morning. I used to like boy sopranos, but have become much less enthusiastic about them lately (it’s a little less treacly sung by a female soprano, I think). But it’s a beautiful piece either way.

We had a really great Easter service last week. A bit strange to have it on Palm Sunday, but I won’t complain. My choir did early American stuff–Billings’ Easter Anthem and Paul Christiansen’s arrangement of What Wondrous Love. D.–next year visit your sister and play our sweet pipe organ for Easter!!!

D., you’ve just described the last couple of years for the rest of us, too!

Also, before you play organ for Kristine, I believe you promised to come play with Sumer and me in Seattle. Speaking of which, she’s in NYC next week. I’ll have her ping you (assuming the email you’ve used here is correct).

Kulturblog

Time to update Susan’s post from August of 07. “They say that these are not the best of times, But they’re the only times I’ve ever known. And I believe there is a time for meditation In cathedrals of our own.” -Billy Joel, Summer Highland Falls

NOTE: This is an essay I wrote as an undergraduate at the University of Utah almost thirty years ago. I am republishing it here as a remembrance of my favorite professor, Mark Strand, upon the occasion of his passing. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live… […]